Most small and large business leaders have been selling and working with the same products for years.  They have assets and liabilities on their Balance Sheet reflective of the significant resources they have dedicated to making the products and delivering the services they have offered for years.

What gets missed in all of this is a clear definition of the solution you provide your customers from the hard work your company does.  Knowing the problem, you solve in your product and services holds the key to unlocking your business’s profit model truths.  Know this, and you will reduce your marketing, sales, and operation costs as you sell more of the products you already produce, delivered at a lower cost of goods sold.

Knowing why your customer decided to buy from you is vital to your sales process.  Knowing what problem you solved for them is even more vital.  Knowing this matters to every aspect of your business.  Gathering the information necessary to answer these questions is one of the best ways to ensure that your business solves its customers’ needs better, differently, and at a lower cost than anyone else.  Finding this “sweet spot” in your solution to your customer’s problems is how you make more money.

Fail to do this foundational work, and you’ll at best be seen as just another “me too” business.  If you only provide the product and do not show how you solve the problem, the consumer’s decision to buy comes down to finding the lowest price for the product or service.  There is no incentive to choose your business over your competitors if you can’t convince them you have the best solution to their problem.

Talking with your best customers is easier when you know whether they view your product as new and innovative or existing and proven.   Four of the six P’s from the expanded marketing mix can help you connect with your target customer by defining how best to connect with target customers who can benefit most from what you have to offer, as shown below:

Promotion

If your target customer sees your product as brand new, your best marketing option is promotion.  Your goal for a product in this space is to create visually compelling graphics illustrating why people should try your product.

Why visually compelling? Because people are most likely to act on what they “see,” in comparison to what they might taste, touch, hear, and smell.  Eighty percent of the population are visual and respond to those clues they can see.  Now, more than ever, it’s a highly visual world.  Advertisers know this and capitalize on it big time, so why not you?

Packaging

If people don’t see your product as “brand new,” yet you have improved your product to offer a better value, your optimum marketing lever is new packaging.  Packaging is included in the expanded 6 P’s marketing mix because of its essential role in attracting attention and imparting relevant product-specific information to help trigger the decision to buy.

Place

If your consumer base is narrow, and the product is scarce or hard to get, you have to show them where to go to buy it.  “Place” is the market’s location and includes the means of distribution used in reaching it. If you want more people to buy your product, you’ll need to focus on generating continuous traffic to the “place” your target prefers to transact business. Where you want to sell your product is irrelevant. It’s about where your customers want to buy it.  Click here for more on the where principle and what you can do about place considerations { O-1 Location Location Location}

Price

If your product or service is widely available and relatively easy to access, you’re in the most demanding competitive situation.  In this situation, more often than not, it’s either about price or easy access to the product if the place is right.

Your strategy here is to find creative ways to show the value of buying from your business over your competitors, or you can relentlessly trim your operating costs through efficiency so that you can provide your product at a lower cost.  To learn what is required for a winning strategic style, click here.

Marketing dollars and sales time are wasted every day by failing to connect how your customers view your product with the marketing mix elements of promotion, packaging, place, and price.  Each marketing element plays a different role depending on whether your product is viewed as new and innovative or existing and proven.   Know where to best dial in your marketing and sales efforts by knowing which marketing mix element is most important to driving higher sales.

Want to learn the secret to higher sales and profits?

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